Heretofore, bank bags, which are usually formed of heavy cloth such as duck or denim for carrying money, currency or the like, have been provided with a seal around the open neck thereof so that access to the interior of the bag or receptacle cannot be obtained without breaking the seal. In this manner, it is immediately apparent whether or not the seal has been tampered with and the contents of the bag either removed therefrom or some material which is worthless has been substituted for the original contents of the bag. One such seal is shown, for example, in Canter et al U.S. Pat. No. 2,654,624.
It has been found that with careful manipulation, the former sealing devices used, which were usually formed of a soft material such as lead, which was tightened or deformed after strings were inserted through holes therein by a tool to restrain or hold the strings in place around the neck of the bag and which had teeth or points which would dig into the bag so that removal of the seal is difficult, did not always serve their intended purpose and were relatively expensive. One reason that they were unsatisfactory was because persons with sufficient patience and strength could carefully manipulate the seal so that it could be removed from the bag and the contents thereof either pilfered or changed and the seal could then be carefully replaced around the neck of the open end of the bag with no readily visible indication that the seal had been tampered with. In bank bags, this is a decided disadvantage because such bags at times contain valuable material sealed in the bags and the bags may not be opened for a considerable period of time. If pilferage or substitution is not discovered immediately it is difficult to trace the person or persons who tampered with the bag or to determine when or where the tampering took place. Furthermore, such seals were usually formed of materials which are relatively expensive, such as lead, for example, and required a special tool to secure them on the bag after the contents have been placed therein.
Other seal constructions which are usable with a cloth bag, for example, are shown in Rifkin, U.S. Pat. No. 2,977,145, and Marchese et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,748,697. While these patents disclose seal constructions, formed of a band of resilient yieldable material with interlocking teeth to hold the yieldable material in position when tightened, the seals are readily accessible, which is obviously undesirable since they can be relatively easily broken externally of the sealing band.
Another seal construction is illustrated in my co-pending application Ser. No. 951,569, filed Oct. 15, 1978 for Bank Bag Sealer and is assigned to the assignee of the present application. As stated, the present invention is an improvement on the sealer shown in the application Ser. No. 951,569, which shows the sealer applied to a cloth bank bag.
The present invention provides an improvement and an inexpensive, foolproof sealing device particularly for bank bags and the like which cannot be removed from the bag without tearing or mutilating the bag material, whereby it is immediately apparent that the bag has been tampered with and the seal damaged. The purpose also is to provide a seal of the type wherein the only manner in which the seal may be removed from the bag is by cutting or severing the same with a cutting tool.
It is an object of the invention to provide a bag seal which is inexpensive and may be manufactured in large quantities very cheaply from metal stampings or molded plastic strips such as formed from materials known by the trademarks Nylon or Delrin.
The improvement concerns panel 26 and panel 28 as described in the foregoing application Ser. No. 951,569 and one of the teeth 20 which lies between the teeth 22 in FIG. 7 thereof. A third tooth, which has been marked as 15 in the present application now actively participates in the sealing action of the strip. Moreover, the improvement conceals tooth 15 and renders it inaccessible to anyone attempting to tamper with it.